Chomsky’s main idea is that while human language is produced linearly (that is, one word after another), it has a deep structure that is instead hierarchical. The full set of rules governing where different parts of speech can go in this hierarchy is waaaay too long for a Reddit comment (and I doubt I could explain it well since it’s been a few years since I really took syntax).

I believe the highest level in this sentence is a VP (Verb Phrase), although I think one might argue it’s a TP (Tensed Phrase) idk, I’m not a syntactician. A VP can take an internal argument (object, for English verbs), but isn’t required to, and in this case it doesn’t, since sleep is an intransitive verb. Embedded in that VP, as in all VPs, is an external argument, in this case the NP (Noun Phrase) “colorless green ideas”, and a V’ (read as “V bar”). The V’ itself contains the V “sleep” and the AP (Adjunct Phrase) “furiously”.

There’s more analysis to be done on this sentence (going into the NP and its adjuncts), but I’ll spare you. The point I’m trying to make is that rules govern the syntax of languages, but these rules are, under Chomsky’s original proposition, unrelated to semantics. He argued it is entirely possible for a sentence to be syntactically grammatical and semantically meaningless, which I think is well-evidenced by the fact that there are some meaningless sentences that seem like English and some that don’t.

Later linguists working with later models have challenged the strict hierarchy of this theory (called the Minimalist Program), and have also challenged its total separation of syntax and semantics.

The other point I should have made clearer in my first comment is that most people use “grammar rules” differently from how linguists use the term, including, I think, the person I was replying to. Linguists are scientists, and therefore take a descriptive view of language. We model what we observe. If our rules don’t conform to how people actually speak, it is we who are wrong, not the speakers, just like how a physicist’s model of particle behavior must be wrong if it doesn’t accurately product how a particle acts. This disqualifies almost all the grammar rules you learned in school. Things like “you can’t say ‘me and my dad went to the store’” or “you can’t end a sentence with a preposition” are obviously wrong, because people do it all the time. If those actually produced sentences universally judged by our mental grammar to be unacceptable, then people wouldn’t do them. The job of syntacticians is not to impose arbitrary rules like these, but instead to discover the actual, implicitly understood rules governing how all real human beings speak, not just those who have been taught to speak in a certain educated register.

There are a couple famous examples. Chomsky’s sentence that often gets used in intro linguistics textbooks is “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” It registers as syntactically correct, a perfectly valid sentence, as opposed to, say, “Sleep ideas green furiously colorless”, which is intuitively much worse. And yet, the syntactically correct sentence is semantically nonsensical. This tells us there must be a mechanism of syntax at least somewhat independent of semantics.

The second example I remember from intro linguistics (or maybe syntax) was the poem Jabberwocky. Almost all content words are nonsense words with no established English meaning. And yet, the sentences work. They read as sentences that should be possible in English. This is because they follow English grammatical rules.

Yes and no. Much of what is taught in schools and passed around between laypeople as the so-called rules is simply incorrect. However, linguistics is a field with many scholars, who, as the scientists they are, observe, experiment on, and model language. There are lots of theoretical debates, especially because linguistics as it stands now is a fairly young field, but that doesn’t mean misinformation is all there is.

I’m also not a doctor but I am studying to become a speech-language pathologist and this is also the answer I would have given

Iirc lemon and lime juices are both around 6% acid, but the composition differs. Lemon is almost entirely citric acid, whereas lime is 4% citric and 2% malic. At least, I’m pretty sure these are the values we use when acid-adjusting cocktails, which is how I know about it lol

I’m not particularly familiar with the law but isn’t opening mail that’s not yours a federal offense? Like I’m not saying you should report your landlord but at the very least I think it’s their fuckup and not yours. You had a right to expect privacy for your mail.

And yeah as others have said already they definitely didn’t buy your story lol